Enter, Night (8 page)

Jeremy ran away that night.

He hitched a ride with the driver of a supply truck returning to Wawa
from a round-trip delivery. From Wawa, he’d hitchhiked to Toronto over
the course of four days of near-starvation and beneath a thick coating of
accumulated highway grime. Most of his rides assumed he was a runaway
of some kind, but because he was frail and small, his rides took pity on
him, especially those men who were travelling with their wives.

After two days, he became aware of a solidarity of sorts among
night drivers. Night drivers seemed more inclined to understand, even
sympathize, with the notion of escape, or flight, or adventure in a way that
those who travelled openly and respectably in the propriety of daylight
might question. Jeremy answered as few questions as he possibly could
without being rude—easier at night, somehow—though he willingly
participated, as best he could, in any conversations his benefactors chose
to initiate, seeing it as the least he could do under the circumstances.

But Jeremy still held back as much personal information as he could.
He knew his mother would find him eventually, if she chose to, but he
was determined to leave as sparse a trail as he could. In his mind, he
entertained cinematic, paranoid fantasies of police interrogations of the
drivers who moved him farther and farther away from Parr’s Landing.
At seventeen, those interrogations seemed entirely feasible in a world
where a seemingly omnipotent
magna mater
like Adeline Parr could lift a
telephone from its cradle and, with one call, condemn her own son to six
months of torture and sadistic psychological experimentation—all with
no more effort than it took her to order a freshly killed animal from the
butcher shop on Martin Street in Parr’s Landing.

The last eight-hour leg of his journey from the town of Thunder
Mouth was in the back of the red Volkswagen bus driven by the lead
singer of a folk quartet from Saskatchewan—three men, John, Wolf, and
David, and their “girl singer,” Annie—who were moving east to follow the
burgeoning music scene that was in full flower in the coffeehouses of the
run-down Yorkville section of Toronto. They told Jeremy about a club
called The Purple Onion where they had been invited to perform. Annie
told him he reminded her of her baby brother, Victor, back in Estevan.

When they stopped at a Red Barn on the side of the road just before
Durrant, Annie bought him a Big Barney and fries, and a chocolate
milkshake. Jeremy was certain that nothing he’d ever eaten before in his
life had tasted as good as that hamburger. She watched him devour it as
though he’d never seen food before and quietly ordered him another one.
He ate that one slower, but only marginally.

Back in the van, he fell asleep in the back seat to the sound of them
singing “Jimmy Crack Corn” in four-part harmony. When he woke up, it
was early evening. They had arrived in Toronto and were driving down
Yonge Street. Looking out the window at the shops and the people, he
touched the breast pocket of his jean jacket where the carefully folded
piece of paper with Jack and Christina’s address was, and breathed a
deep sigh of relief. If he’d believed in God, he would have said a prayer.
He felt entirely safe for the first time since he was a small child.

At Bloor Street, the musicians let him out. Annie tucked a five-dollar
bill into his pocket and told him to come see them play sometime.

“I’m sorry we can’t take you right to your brother’s, but we’re running
behind schedule as it is,” said Wolf, squinting down at the map in his
hands. “The neighbourhood you’re looking for is called Cabbagetown.
According to this, it isn’t far. Just walk east till you get to Parliament,
and then turn right. You should be able to find Sumach Street real easy.
If you can’t, just ask.”

“Thank you guys so much,” Jeremy said. “And thanks for the
burger, Annie.” Impulsively and clumsily he reached out and hugged her.
Inhaling in the caramel scent of her hair and skin, taking the soft, warm,
nurturing femaleness of her, he marvelled at the difference between her
hug and the agate-hard brittleness of his own mother’s hibernal embrace.
Jeremy held tightly to Annie for a moment, and then let go.

“Be safe, little man,” Annie said, ruffling his hair. “Have a big life.”
Then she climbed back in to the waiting van and the door slid shut.

The red Volkswagen turned right on Bloor, towards Yorkville;
Jeremy turned left on foot towards Cabbagetown, each in the direction
of their respective destinies.

Arriving at the house on Sumach Street, Jeremy rang the doorbell.
Jack answered the door. Before Jeremy even had a chance to speak, Jack
pulled him into the house and hugged him as though he would never let
him go. Behind him came Christina and five-year-old Morgan. When she
saw that everyone else was crying, Morgan companionably burst into
tears, which made all of them laugh.

Late that night, in front of the fireplace, he and Jack talked while
Christina and Morgan slept upstairs. Jack wept when Jeremy told him
about what they’d done to him at the Doucette Institute with the express
permission of their mother. He, in turn, explained to Jeremy that his
mother had tried to pay Christina’s parents to force her to get an abortion.
When they refused, Adeline Parr had warned them to be careful, because
a mining town was fraught with potentially fatal accidents. Christina’s
parents told Christina what Adeline had said, and Christina, in turn, told
Jack.

Jack confided to Jeremy that they believed that Christina’s life—
and the life of the baby she was carrying—would be in danger if they
remained in Parr’s Landing. So they’d escaped that night much like
Jeremy had.

“I’m so sorry I left you,” Jack said. “Forget our mother. Forget
everything you knew before. You can be yourself here. If you want to be
. . . well, you know, if you want to be with . . . men, that’s OK with me.
It’ll be fine with Christina, too. We’ve known . . . homosexuals before,
you know. There are some right here in this neighbourhood. They’re nice
fellas, run the antique shop on Parliament. We’ll make our own family
here. A new family. You don’t have to go back.”

“What if she comes looking for me? What if she tries to force me to
come home?”

“You’re turning eighteen in a couple of days, Jeremy. Remember,
last year they lowered the age of consent from twenty-one to eighteen.
She can’t touch you even if she wanted to, from a legal standpoint. She
can’t
make
you go back.”

“You know she hired detectives to find you and Christina,” Jeremy
said fretfully. “She knows where you live and everything. She’ll know I’m
here.”

“Let her,” Jack said defiantly. “I don’t care. Also, she didn’t try to
get me to come home, remember? She just wanted to know where I was.
She wants to be in control. That’s always been the most important thing
for her, our whole lives. Besides,” he added, “I don’t think she’ll come
looking for you. She’s probably happy to have you out of the way. You
can’t embarrass her here.”

“She sent me away. She can do it again. If we get any hints that she’s
after me, I’ll have to leave. I just can’t go through that again. I’d rather be
dead.”

“Don’t worry, Jeremy. I won’t let her.”

Then Jack held him as Jeremy wept against his shoulder. When
Jeremy’s sobs had subsided, Jack took his brother’s hands in his own.

“Stay here, Jeremy. Be an uncle to Morgan. Be Christina’s brother-in-law. Love whomever you want. I don’t care, and neither does Christina.
I’ll protect all of you. I’m never, ever letting you go again.”

It was a promise Jack kept faithfully for the next ten years. He kept it
right up to that night in February, nine months ago. Driving home from
an out-of-town sales call in Guelph in a sudden snowstorm, he hit a patch
of black ice on an eastbound highway while trying to avoid an oncoming
snowplow. The car fishtailed, then spun into a three-sixty, crashing into
the guardrail. He hadn’t been wearing a seat belt. The outward trajectory
of his body was stopped only by the steering wheel, which crushed his
chest and lungs in a fraction of a second.

Jack Parr died of thoracic trauma and internal bleeding while waiting
for an ambulance from Guelph that finally arrived twenty minutes later.
By that time, Christina had been rendered a destitute widow, Morgan
had been rendered a half-orphan, and Jeremy had been rendered the
only son of Adeline Parr, the long-abandoned ogress of Parr’s Landing.

“What?” Jeremy was startled
out of his reverie. He turned to Christina.
“Sorry, Chris, I didn’t hear you. What did you say?”

“I asked you what you were thinking about. And keep your voice
down,” Christina whispered. “I think Morgan’s asleep.” She checked her
rearview mirror and saw that her daughter was, in fact, sleeping in the
back seat of the Chevelle, with her head leaning against the wadded-up
sweater she was using as a makeshift pillow.

“Oh, I don’t know. I was remembering things. I was thinking about
Jack.”

Christina was silent, her eyes on the road. Then she said, “I know.
I’ve been thinking about him all day myself. This is the one thing he
never wanted to happen. But what can you do? Life is what happens
when you’re busy making other plans, right?”

“You know, it could be all right. She might have changed, you know.”

“I don’t see her forgiving any of us for leaving—especially me, since
she blamed me for—” Christina looked into the rearview mirror again.
“Well, for the way I changed her plans for the family. I also have a feeling
she blames me for Jack’s death, too. She didn’t directly say it in the letter,
but it was there all the same.”

“Having the surviving son be someone like me wasn’t part of her
plan for the glories of the Parr family, either, Chris. Don’t take all of this
on yourself. She never forgave me for being queer, let alone for failing her
loving attempts to cure me. I still have nightmares about that sadist. Dr.
Gionet, I mean,” he said wryly. “Not Adeline. Though she’s been known
to haunt a dream or two, as well.”

“Well, I have nightmares about Adeline all the time.”

Jeremy peered into the darkness through the windshield. There was
no light anywhere except what was provided by the Chevelle’s headlights
bouncing off the gnarled logging road. “It’s pitch black out here. I guess
I forgot what it’s like at night. Jesus, it’s Saturday. If I were home I’d
be dancing with handsome men at the Parkside or the St. Charles right
now, with my shirt off and a bottle of poppers in my nose. Ah, memories.
They’re all we’ll have to sustain us out here in God’s country. Where the
hell
are
we, anyway?”

Christina said, “We’re just south of Marathon and about five miles
to Hattie Cove. After that, about half an hour.”

“That was my attempt at humour, by the way,” Jeremy said. “I’m
hurt that you didn’t laugh. I mean, about the poppers and the dancing.”

“I just doubt that it’s much of an exaggeration,” Christina replied
tartly. “And besides, right about now it sounds pretty amazing. Have you
thought about it, by the way? I mean, what it’s going to be like for you
back home being openly hom . . . sorry,
gay,
” she corrected herself, using
the word that Jeremy and his friends applied to themselves.

“You said ‘home’ to refer to that place,” Jeremy said. He shuddered.
“It’s not my home. Toronto is my home.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes, I do.” He sighed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bite your head off. And
yes, I’ve thought about it a lot. Of course I’m not going to be ‘openly gay’
there. You don’t get to be ‘openly gay’ way up north. I don’t think they’ve
even heard the word ‘gay.’ It’s ‘faggot,’ ‘fruit,’ or ‘queer.’ Or, something
worse. Aside from the fact that I’d get killed—scion of the great Parr
name or not—who on earth would I ‘be gay’
with
?”

“Have you thought about that guy you used to know? What was his
name—Elliot? Elliot McCormack?”

“McKitrick. Elliot McKitrick. And no,” Jeremy lied, “I haven’t. I
haven’t thought about him in years.”

“I wonder what happened to him?”

“I do know that his father beat him up pretty badly when he found
out about us. I heard about it from my mother. Used a whip on him,
apparently. My mother said I should be grateful that she loved me enough to send me to the Doucette instead of doing to me what Elliot’s father did
to him.” He was silent for a moment. “I don’t know what happened in the
end.”

Softly, Christina asked, “Did you love him? I mean, ‘love-love’?”
Jeremy sighed again. “Oh, what’s love? I fell in ‘love’ a lot in Toronto.
I certainly thought it was ‘love-love.’ With Elliot, we were both young.”
He paused. “Yes, I did love him, I guess. He was so handsome, almost as
handsome as Jack.”

“I sort of remember him. I went to school with his sister. She was
pretty, too.”

“Elliot’s probably fat and bald now and married to some water
buffalo with seven kids. That is if my mother didn’t have him killed.”
Jeremy laughed mirthlessly. “Jesus,
why
are we doing this? Remind me?”

“
I’m
doing what I have to do,” Christina said. “I have no money
and no place to go. We couldn’t keep staying on people’s couches, and
I couldn’t support Morgan by working as a waitress, let alone help her
through this grieving period, if I was away every night. Not yet, anyway.
That’s why I wrote to her. No, Jack didn’t want me to ever have to do
this, but it’s something we should have thought about when he was alive.
And frankly, Adeline owes me for what she did. And she especially owes
Morgan. She’s her granddaughter, for Christ’s sake.” Christina reached
over and touched Jeremy’s knee lightly with her fingers. “You, on the
other hand, are being a saint on this earth for coming with us to protect
us. Jack would have been so proud of you.”